Our fifth installment of Developing a Workforce Plan involves Challenges. Businesses do not just decide to have a Workforce Plan, discuss it, and it happens. There are unique and expected Challenges of Workforce Planning that you will face when establishing a workforce plan that adds value. These challenges, if not addressed and overcome fully in the process, will doom your Workforce Plan before it ever starts.
What are the Challenges of Workforce Planning?
In the Fourth Article in the Workforce Planning Series; Developing an Action Plan for your Workforce Planning involves considering its purpose. Workforce Planning is significantly more than just filling open vacancies and keeping warm bodies in positions. It involves this simple formula:
High Performing Workforce = Employees’ Knowledge + Skills + Experience + Initiative
You didn’t think you had to do math, did you? In reality, it is less math than it is understanding the relationship between different elements of Workforce Planning. The goal when Developing an Action Plan for your Workforce Planning is to achieve high performance from the workforce. Not “meets expectations” but HIGH PERFORMANCE.
How can your action plan develop HIGH PERFORMANCE from your Workforce?
In our Third Article in the Workforce Planning Series we discuss how all plans have a beginning, and certainly Developing a Workforce Plan does. How You Develop A Workforce Plan is not as simple as waking up one day and deciding. “We are going to have a workforce plan.” It requires careful thought and yes, planning to plan. Previously I shared that there were but 6 steps in the process. The first of those steps was “Develop a Business Strategic Plan.” Hopefully, your business has one, for, without a Strategic Plan, your Workforce Plan has limited value. Once you have your strategic plan we get to our actual question, How Do You Develop a Workforce Plan?
It starts with an understanding…
In our second article in the Workforce Planning series, we discuss Why Do Organizations Need Workforce Planning? Workforce Planning is the way highly effective leaders ensure they have a sustainable supply of the right talent, available at the right place and time, to meet their short- and long-term business objectives. It provides them an action plan that helps meet their long-term goals to maintain long-term success. It’s an ongoing process that allows them to prepare to lead their company into the future successfully.
If your business is like many businesses, you have strategy’s in place that focuses on:
Technology,
Capital,
Brands, and so on
What you may not have is a strategy that focuses on what most businesses call their most valuable asset; your workforce. Few businesses are as meaningful in their strategies for their most costly resource; the workforce.
What does all that mean? Well, read on…
It seems everyone is having a Recruiting and Retention problem. The solution, almost universally is higher pay, more benefits at less cost and perks; we can’t forget the perks. When you add all of this together, you find that everyone is doing the same thing, no one is different, and workers are moving from employer to employer. As we struggle with Recruiting and Retention, we may forget that simple solutions, that aren’t the same as everyone else, are the best. In other words, Fix your Recruiting and Retention Problem with simple solutions.
Here’s how…